OpenAI said Thursday that its API will now include a number of new voice intelligence features designed to help developers create apps that can talk, transcribe, and translate conversations with users.

The company’s new GPT‑Realtime‑2 is another voice model, built to create a realistic vocal simulation that can converse with users. However, unlike its predecessor (GPT-Realtime-1.5) this one is built with GPT‑5‑class reasoning that OpenAI says was created to deal with more complicated requests from users.

The company is also launching GPT‑Realtime‑Translate which, just as it sounds, is designed to provide real-time translation services that “keep pace” with the user, conversationally. The feature includes more than 70 input languages (that is, the languages that it can comprehend) and 13 output languages (the languages it relays to the speaker).

Finally, the company has also launched a new transcription capability, GPT-Realtime-Whisper, which gives users live speech-to-text capabilities that are captured as interactions occur.

“Together, the models we are launching move real-time audio from simple call-and-response toward voice interfaces that can actually do work: listen, reason, translate, transcribe, and take action as a conversation unfolds,” the company said.

Who will these updates be good for? Companies that want to expand customer service capabilities are an obvious target. However, OpenAI also notes that its new features will assist with a wide array of areas, including education, media, events, and creator platforms, among others.

As useful as these tools seem from an enterprise perspective, it also seems plausible that they could be misused. The company said it has built guardrails to stop its new features from being abused to create spam, fraud, or other forms of online abuse. Certain triggers have been embedded in the system so that “conversations can be halted if they are detected as violating our harmful content guidelines,” OpenAI said.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

All of the new voice models are included in OpenAI’s Realtime API. Translate and Whisper are billed by the minute, while GPT-Realtime-2 is billed by token consumption.

Kodiak AI’s stock tumbled 37% in after-hours trading Thursday after the self-driving truck startup disclosed it had raised $100 million by selling shares at a steep discount — a sign that investors were willing to back the company but not at its current market price.

The company sold shares at $6.50 each, well below its closing price of $9.10, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The raise also included warrants — instruments that give investors the right to buy additional shares later at a set price, in this case as low as $6.

The financing came from existing backer Ares Management and several unnamed institutional investors.

The influx of capital comes as Kodiak pushes forward on the expensive task of scaling its self-driving trucks business, which covers off-road industrial settings and public highways, with the ultimate goal of eventually spending less than it earns. Kodiak reported revenue of $1.8 million in the first quarter, up from the $1.4 million it logged in the same period a year prior. The company’s loss from operations was $37.8 million, twice what it reported in the same period last year.

Those numbers help explain why the discount terms rattled investors. The company is burning cash fast, and the raise — while sizable — does little to change that math in the near term.

Kodiak has made some recent progress on the business front, including a new commercial contract with Roehl Transport, a pilot program to test Kodiak-equipped autonomous trucks at West Fraser Timber Co.’s log-hauling operations in Alberta, Canada, and a collaboration with the military vehicle maker General Dynamics Land Systems to create autonomous ground vehicles for defense applications.

Under the deal with Roehl, which was also announced Thursday, Kodiak-equipped trucks will autonomously haul freight between Dallas and Houston on four round trips per week. The trucks operate autonomously on the entirety of the trip, but Kodiak keeps a human safety operator behind the wheel as a precaution.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

Kodiak founder and CEO Don Burnette said the company is on track to move to driverless trucking on public highways later this year as it ramps up operations.

“We have tons of over-the-road long-haul initiatives, and bringing on new partners continues to show momentum,” he said in an interview. “We’re excited about the progress that we’re making as we march toward our driverless launch later this year.”

For now, Kodiak owns the trucks, provides the safety driver, and carries the freight for Roehl along with its other existing on-highway customers, which include Werner, J.B. Hunt, Bridgestone, Martin Brower, and C.R. England. But that arrangement will change once it goes to driverless trucking operations.

“Our intention is to not own the trucks at that point [but to] operate our driver-as-a-service model, where [customers] own and operate the trucks,” Burnette said. He added that this is the system it uses with its off-highway customer Atlas for its driverless deployment in the Permian Basin of Texas.

While Kodiak plans to pull the safety driver by the end of 2026, Burnette said it won’t start driverless operations on public highways until it has finished validating the technology.

“It’s already operating under all of the conditions that we expect to launch driverless, but there’s a lot of validation work that we need to do, and that’s where we bring in our autonomy readiness measure,” Burnette said, describing the initiative — released Thursday — as a zero-to-100 score tracking how much of Kodiak’s internal safety validation is complete. As of April, Kodiak was at 86%, Burnette said.

The company, which was previously called Kodiak Robotics, went public in September via a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II, an affiliate of Ares Management. The deal valued the startup at about $2.5 billion.

At the time, Kodiak raised $275 million in financing. More than $212.5 million came from certain institutional investors, including $145 million in PIPE funding (Private Investment in Public Equity, a method by which investors purchase shares directly from a public company) and about $62.9 million in trust cash from Ares. That trust cash shrank from its initial $562 million as some SPAC investors redeemed their shares — a standard provision that lets SPAC investors recover their money before a merger closes.

In Brief

Disney senior executives could potentially combine Disney+ with other apps like Disneyland Resort and Disney Cruise Line Navigator to make one unified app, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Sources said these discussions were at an early stage, but that they are referring to this as a “super app” internally.

Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who took over for Bob Iger earlier this year, has emphasized his intent to streamline the Disney experience, making the relationship between Disney+ and the Disney parks more cohesive.

“Disney+ becomes the primary relationship between Disney and its fans, the place where everything comes together,” D’Amaro said on Disney’s quarterly earnings call this week.

The project is a bit reminiscent of Elon Musk’s desire to turn X into an “everything app” like China’s WeChat (though X recently launched a stand-alone chat app, which is counterintuitive). But instead of encompassing literally everything like payments and messaging, Disney’s ambition to bring all of its mobile platforms under one app is a bit more feasible, though still a bit eyebrow-raising.

It’s likely that D’Amaro wants to increase interest in the parks by getting Mickey Mouse in front of more Disney+ subscribers. It’s worth noting that Disney+ subscribers and Disney parks visitors aren’t necessarily the same customers, which could prove awkward if the Disney+ app were bogged down with advertisements for cruises.

Swedish startup Pit may have gained notice for some rage-bait social media posts, but it has also become another Stockholm AI startup to watch.

Pit is led by the co-founders of European scooter giant Voi, including Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm. He is joined by former iZettle and Klarna engineers. And it is now backed by a16z, which is leading the startup’s $16 million seed round. Stockholm, also home to Lovable, is one of the places where a16z has been actively looking for the next European unicorn.

Pit is going after enterprise AI with products intended to learn from the clients how their businesses run then create custom software to automate processes, Pit CEO Adam Jafer told TechCrunch.

Jafer left Voi last summer after a seven-year tenure during which the company scaled into a team of nearly 1,000 employees operating in 13 countries. From his engineering viewpoint, Jafer saw how AI has matured enough for enterprise use. Initially, he saw a chance to replace low-hanging SaaS tools with in-house apps, but he soon envisioned an opportunity beyond Voi.

“The aha moment for the bigger opportunity was when the models were no longer just chatbots that generate text, but became more agentic and could do things,” he told TechCrunch. Unlike competitors offering AI agent-building or vibe-coding products, Pit positions itself as an “AI product team as a service.”

Pit is entering a crowded market and hopes to differentiate itself by relying on two pillars: Pit Studio, which lets enterprise employees guide it through processes that could be handled by AI-generated software; and Pit Cloud, which, the startup promises, provides that software in a way that meets enterprise requirements on governance, certifications, and auditability.

In mid-January, the startup started testing its plan with pilot customers in telecom, healthcare, logistics, and other sectors, focusing solely on automating internal processes. “Nothing customer facing, no conversational AI, just pure back-office, service, and support functions that we turn into automations so that you can give back time to people to focus on your core business,” Jafer said.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

The startup is now preparing to scale up commercially, but it won’t be hands-off. Following the trend of AI companies hiring forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) to embed themselves to drive enterprise adoption, Pit is also hiring solution engineers. The goal, Jafer said, is to meet the expectations of the large customers it is targeting. “They’re looking to buy outcomes. They want processes to go faster. They want to see productivity unlock and time unlock,” he said.

Jafer said Pit is not pitching itself as a way to reduce human labor and cut jobs. “The theme is more around moving people upstream to do more valuable things for the business, rather than repetitive back-office work.” Success metrics also go beyond saving time and money. “Some of it is just quality of work improvement, reducing human errors and so on.”

Yet Pit’s own needs on this became a subject of controversy a few months ago when Jafer posted on LinkedIn declaring “Yes, our team currently has no junior engineers. At Pit, agents now do most of what junior engineers used to do.”

While the post is still visible, he no longer stands by that. “It may have started like that, but you need a good mix as you scale,” he said with a smile.

Hjelm anticipated the all-male team might raise eyebrows, too. In a post on X, he wrote that Pit was “founded by tech bros, from Voi and Klarna,” but immediately added, “We have tech girls on the team as well, fyi.” That clarification wasn’t immediately apparent from Pit’s LinkedIn profile, although TechCrunch has spoken with one woman working at Pit on the communications side.

What the picture does reflect, though, is a sense of getting the band back together. Voi’s four co-founders have remained friends over the years, and three of them are now part of this new journey: Hjelm, Jafer, and Filip Lindvall, now a founding engineer at Pit. One of the startup’s engineers, Andreas Hjelm, is none other than Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm’s brother.

While Fredrik Hjelm is named as a co-founder of Pit, too, he is still Voi’s CEO, so his role will likely be less hands-on for the time being. Since going profitable in 2024, Voi has been considered a potential IPO candidate, and closed 2025 with strong results. But his involvement as a well-connected entrepreneur could still open doors — and already has, with a16z.

In a tweet, Hjelm explained how a16z partners Alex Rampell and Gabriel Vasquez ended up leading Pit’s round. He became acquainted with Ben Horowitz, Gabriel Vasquez, and Jen Kha “a few years ago when they came to Stockholm to understand what they could do for European tech. We stayed in touch. When it came to picking partners for Pit, we didn’t need the money to get going, but we wanted the strongest backers we could find. So we picked them, and they picked us.”

Jafer also corroborated that Pit didn’t spend much time with other firms to raise its round, which was also backed by Pit’s founders themselves, as well as Lakestar, executives from American tech companies, and wealthy families from the Nordics. This transatlantic cap table confirms that there is growing interest for AI out of Stockholm, which has consolidated itself as one of the most active startup hubs in Europe.



Pit could also benefit from its European DNA when it comes to sales. “We’re going after industrials, and there’s plenty of that in Europe,” Jafer said. He also reported that clients appreciate Pit’s agnostic approach. Since it can use different AI and cloud vendors depending on clients’ preferences, it could benefit from the current tailwinds for sovereign tech, especially in critical sectors.

“EU models running on EU compute is top of mind for almost every CIO we’re meeting,” Jafer said.

On Tuesday, education tech giant Instructure disclosed a data breach where hackers stole students’ private information, including their names, personal email addresses, and messages sent between teachers and students.

Now, it appears hackers were able to compromise Instructure again — this time defacing several schools’ login pages to the company’s platform Canvas, which allows schools to manage coursework and assignments and communicate with students.

TechCrunch saw a message published by the cybercrime group ShinyHunters on the Canvas login pages of three separate schools. A review of the defaced portals shows that the hackers injected an HTML file that altered the login screens to display their message.

The message says the hackers will publish the stolen data on May 12 if the company does not “negotiate a settlement.”

At the time of writing, Instructure’s website appeared to be partially online, at times returning a “too many requests” error. The company’s Canvas portal displayed a notice saying it was “currently undergoing scheduled maintenance.”

Instructure did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

ShinyHunters had previously claimed responsibility for the original hack, publicizing it on its leak site — a website hackers use to publish stolen data and pressure victims into paying ransoms — in an effort to extort Instructure into paying to keep the data from going public. This apparent new hack, along with the fact that hackers chose to notify TechCrunch about the defaced login pages, indicate that the hackers are trying to ramp up pressure on Instructure and its customers, hoping to force them to cave to the hackers’ demands.

It’s unclear how the hackers were able to compromise the login pages. When asked, a member of ShinyHunters told TechCrunch that they couldn’t comment on specifics, but said this is a second, separate breach.

Following the original breach at Instructure, the hackers claimed to have stolen data from almost 9,000 schools around the world, with the stolen files allegedly containing information on 231 million people.

The group has compromised countless victims over the last couple of years, following the same financially motivated playbook: hack, publicize, and extort.

While AI disruption looms over many legacy SaaS companies, several HR tech startups seem to be thriving.

One of these companies is small-business payroll provider Gusto. The 14-year-old company, last valued at over $9 billion, just announced that it surpassed $1 billion in revenue earlier this year. Unlike many startups that report annualized recurring revenue (ARR) — an estimate of the value of their contracts in the upcoming 12 months — Gusto’s figure represents actual revenue earned over the previous 12 months.

Gusto was last valued at $9.3 billion, Fortune reported, when it launched a $200 million tender offer for its employees in June 2025. The deal valued the company about where it was valued in early 2022.

That’s a bargain for Gusto investors compared to its decacorn competitors. For instance, Deel, which serves large international businesses, crossed $1 billion in ARR last year. The company was last valued at $17.3 billion when it raised a $300 million round co-led by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz in October.

Meanwhile, Deel’s primary rival, Rippling, which last month announced that it also hit $1 billion in ARR, was last valued at $16.8 billion after raising $450 million in May 2025.

By crossing the $1 billion revenue threshold, Gusto is clearly showing its financial might against its peers.

The company has been making other big moves, too. Last year, it completed the acquisition of Guideline, a startup offering retirement plans to small and medium businesses, for about $600 million, as we reported.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

Following the December board appointment of Anthropic CTO Rahul Patil, Gusto is already reporting massive efficiency gains. According to the company, AI now accounts for 50% of all new code generation and handles an equal share of customer support cases.

Given its relatively modest valuation compared to its revenue, Gusto is well-positioned for another fundraise, or even an IPO, at a higher valuation. The company has another key factor in its favor. While rivals Deel and Rippling remain embroiled in a high-profile corporate espionage lawsuit, Gusto has stayed out of those kinds of headlines and focused on its business.

Gusto has long been considered an IPO candidate. Even so, a public debut appears iffy in 2026 while the IPO market still remains so frosty.

When TechCrunch interviewed Gusto CEO and co-founder Josh Reeves in December, he insisted he doesn’t spend much time thinking about an IPO, preferring instead to focus on serving customers and scaling the business.

As for if that’s changed given the revenue milestone, the company won’t say. A Gusto spokesperson tells us: “Nothing to share on the IPO timeline front.”

On Thursday OpenAI announced a new feature called Trusted Contact, designed to alert a trusted third party if mentions of self-harm are expressed within a conversation. The feature allows an adult ChatGPT user to designate another person as a trusted contact within their account, such as a friend or family member. In cases where a conversation may turn to self-harm, OpenAI will now encourage the user to reach out to that contact. It also sends an automated alert to the contact, encouraging them to check in with the user.

OpenAI has faced a wave of lawsuits from the families of people who have committed suicide after talking with its chatbot. In a number of cases, the families say ChatGPT encouraged their loved one to kill themselves — or even helped them plan it out.

OpenAI currently uses a combination of automation and human review to handle potentially harmful incidents. Certain conversational triggers alert the company’s system to suicidal ideations, which then relay the information to a human safety team. The company claims that every time it receives this kind of notification, the incident is reviewed by a human. “We strive to review these safety notifications in under one hour,” the company says.

If OpenAI’s internal team decides that the situation represents a serious safety risk, ChatGPT proceeds to send the trusted contact an alert — either by email, text message, or an in-app notification. The alert is designed to be brief and to encourage the contact to check in with the person in question. It does not include detailed information about what was being discussed, as a means of protecting the user’s privacy, the company says.

Image Credits:OpenAI

The Trusted Contact feature follows the safeguards the company introduced last September that gave parents the power to have some oversight of their teens’ accounts, including receiving safety notifications designed to alert the parent if OpenAI’s system believes their child is facing a “serious safety risk.” For some time now, ChatGPT has also included automated alerts to seek professional health services, should a conversation trend toward the topic of self-harm.

Crucially, Trust Contact is optional and, even if the protection is activated on a particular account, any user can have multiple ChatGPT accounts. OpenAI’s parental controls are also optional, presenting a similar limitation.

“Trusted Contact is part of OpenAI’s broader effort to build AI systems that help people during difficult moments,” the company wrote in the announcement post. “We will continue to work with clinicians, researchers, and policymakers to improve how AI systems respond when people may be experiencing distress.”

In Brief

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Tuesday that the later release 2026 Tesla Model Y is the first vehicle to meet the agency’s new benchmark for advanced driver assistance systems.

Four pass-fail tests were added to the agency’s safety ratings program, assessing a car’s automatic emergency braking for pedestrians, blind-spot warning, blind-spot intervention, and lane assist, a feature that helps keep the vehicle in the lane.

The updated criteria are meant to catch up to ever-advancing vehicles and the long list of features pitched to consumers. Automakers typically brand these features with names that don’t always describe which tasks they perform, and there’s often no government-provided benchmark to assesses how they perform.

The new benchmark rating applies to 2026 Tesla Model Y vehicles assembled on or after November 12, 2025.

The tests are part of NHTSA’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), which runs the government’s 5-Star safety rating program. NCAP also conducts a battery of tests to determine how vehicles handle frontal and side crashes as well as rollover resistance, and crash avoidance. The four advanced driver assistance criteria were added in 2024 as part of an update to NCAP to include advanced driver assistance features.

TechCrunch has reached out to NHTSA to learn what other vehicles are in the queue. We will update the article if the agency responds.

Perplexity’s Personal Computer, its answer to OpenClaw and other local AI agents, is now available to all Mac users via its desktop app, the company announced on Thursday.

As a reminder, Personal Computer is an expansion on Perplexity’s general-purpose, multi-model digital worker dubbed, confusingly, Perplexity Computer. “Personal Computer,” meanwhile, is designed to bring those capabilities to your own device. It does so by allowing AI agents access to local files, applications, and connectors, as well as the web, in order to handle the individual user’s personal, multi-step workflows.

Or, as the company describes Personal Computer, it “takes Computer out of the cloud-only world and onto the device where most of your real work already takes place.”

Image Credits:Perplexity

The goal is to capitalize on the growing demand for local AI agents, popularized by OpenClaw, which can perform tasks on users’ behalf. But while OpenClaw presented several security risks because of its elevated permissions, solutions like Personal Computer are meant to offer users a safer AI-enabled computing environment. (Or at least that’s the claim.)

Perplexity’s Personal Computer was introduced last month, but was limited to Perplexity Max subscribers and involved a waitlist. Today, the company says anyone on a Mac can now try the software as part of its new Perplexity Mac app. (Anyone can download the new app, but Personal Computer requires a Pro or Max subscription.)

At launch, the software is able to work with your local files, native Mac apps, and operate on the web. It can also orchestrate tools, files, use over 400 connectors, and leverage your personal context, all within a secure development environment on Perplexity’s servers.

If paired with Perplexity’s AI-powered Comet web browser, it can operate web-based tools without the need for direct connectors.

Image Credits:Perplexity

Designed to run autonomous agents on an always-on device like a Mac Mini, Personal Computer can even be accessed remotely from your iPhone, where you can initiate tasks or approve requests from your device.

Perplexity suggests this can be used for all types of work, like working with spreadsheets, documents, and projects with many different materials. Because the tool can work across apps, agents could do something like compare two files from different apps or pull notes from one app to create a draft in another.

As a result of its general availability, Perplexity says its older Mac app will be deprecated in the weeks ahead so the team can focus on the Personal Computer app.

The new Mac app is available as a direct download only for now; it’s not in the Mac App Store.

Elon Musk’s legal effort to dismantle OpenAI may hinge on how its for-profit subsidiary enhances or detracts from the frontier lab’s founding mission of ensuring that humanity benefits from artificial general intelligence.

On Thursday, a federal court in Oakland, California, heard a former employee and board member say the company’s efforts to push AI products into the marketplace compromised its commitment to AI safety.

Rosie Campbell joined the company’s AGI readiness team in 2021, and she left OpenAI in 2024 after her team was disbanded. Another safety-focused team, the Super Alignment team, was shut down in the same time period.

“When I joined, it was very research-focused and common for people to talk about AGI and safety issues,” she testified. “Over time it became more like a product-focused organization.”

Under cross-examination, Campbell acknowledged that significant funding was likely necessary for the lab’s goal of building AGI but said creating a super-intelligent computer model without the right safety measures in place wouldn’t fit with the mission of the organization she originally joined.

Campbell pointed to an incident where Microsoft deployed a version of the company’s GPT-4 model in India through its Bing search engine before the model had been evaluated by the company’s Deployment Safety Board (DSB). The model itself did not present a huge risk, she said, but the company needed “to set strong precedents as the technology gets more powerful. We want to have good safety processes in place we know are being followed reliably.”

OpenAI’s attorneys also had Campbell admit that in her “speculative opinion,” OpenAI’s safety approach is superior to that at xAI, the AI company that Musk founded that was acquired by SpaceX earlier this year.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

OpenAI releases evaluations of its models and shares a safety framework publicly, but the company declined to comment on its current approach to AGI alignment. Dylan Scandinaro, its current head of preparedness, was hired from Anthropic in February. Altman said the hire would let him “sleep better tonight.”

The deployment of GPT-4 in India, however, was one of the red flags that led OpenAI’s non-profit board to briefly fire CEO Sam Altman in 2023. That incident took place after employees, including then-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever and then-CTO Mira Murati, complained about Altman’s conflict-averse management style. Tasha McCauley, a member of the board at the time, testified about concerns that Altman was not forthcoming enough with the board for its unusual structure to function.

McCauley also discussed a widely reported pattern of Altman misleading the board. Notably, Altman lied to another board member about McCauley’s intention to remove Helen Toner, a third board member who published a white paper that included some implied criticism of OpenAI’s safety policy. Altman also failed to inform the board about the decision to launch ChatGPT publicly, and members were concerned about his lack of disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

“We are a non-profit board and our mandate was to be able to oversee the for-profit underneath us,” McCauley told the court. “Our primary way to do that was being called into question. We did not have a high degree of confidence at all to trust that the information being conveyed to us allowed us to make decisions in an informed way.”

However, the decision to boot Altman came at the same time as a tender offer to the company’s employees. McCauley said that when OpenAI’s staff started to side with Altman and Microsoft worked to restore the status quo, the board ultimately reversed course, with the members opposed to Altman stepping down.

The apparent failure of the non-profit board to influence the for-profit organization goes directly to Musk’s case that the transformation of OpenAI from research organization into one of the largest private companies in the world broke the implicit agreement of the organization’s founders.

David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia Law School who is being paid by Musk’s team to act as an expert witness, echoed McCauley’s concerns.

“OpenAI has emphasized that a key part of its mission is safety and they are going to prioritize safety over profits,” Schizer said. “Part of that is taking safety rules seriously, if something needs to be subject to safety review, it needs to happen. What matters is the process issue.”

With AI already deeply embedded in for-profit companies, the issue goes far beyond a single lab. McCauley said the failures of internal governance at OpenAI should be a reason to embrace stronger government regulation of advanced AI — “[if] it all comes down to one CEO making those decisions, and we have the public good at stake, that’s very suboptimal.”

Will dating app malaise finally kill off the swipe? For Bumble, at least, that seems to be the case.

In an interview with Axios on Thursday, Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd confirmed that Bumble will get rid of swiping, the defining feature of 2010s dating apps.

“We are going to be saying goodbye to the swipe and hello to something that I believe is revolutionary for the category,” Wolfe Herd said.

Bumble is planning to overhaul its app later this year, following several disappointing quarters in which the app consistently lost paying users. In this year’s first quarter, Bumble’s paid users fell about 21% to 3.2 million, down from 4 million last year.

Redesigning the app is a pretty serious intervention, signaling to investors that the situation is dire. But like any good CEO, Wolfe Herd has done some verbal gymnastics to argue that Bumble is doing a very good job at losing money.

“This is a period of real transformation at Bumble over the past few quarters,” she said on this week’s quarterly earnings call. “We have executed a deliberate reset of our member base. We made a clear choice to prioritize quality over quantity, focusing on well-intentioned, engaged members. That decision reduced overall scale, but meaningfully improved the health of our ecosystem.”

Based on Wolfe Herd’s past comments about Bumble’s new direction, the company is expected to lean into AI — Bumble is even working on an AI dating assistant called Bee, and Wolfe Herd has made many comments over the years about how AI will be “a supercharger to love and relationships.”

Of course, dating apps already use AI to decide what users should be shown to one another. But Gen Z is trending more negative toward in-your-face AI features, and Wolfe Herd has expressed interest in more extreme futures, like having personal AI bots that date other AI bots for you. So, it’s unclear if these “Black Mirror”-like overtures will effectively attract users in their 20s. Bumble’s overhaul isn’t expected to launch until the last quarter of this year, so users will still be swiping for now.

Tome, a book-tracking app and book lovers community, is closing its doors.

Built on the back of the sizable and influential BookTok community — creators who discuss and review books on TikTok — the app offered readers a place to chronicle and rate their books, get recommendations, and even add photos of things like favorite quotes or memes, or share playlists that match the book’s vibes.

The app was one of many that caters to a growing demographic of Gen Z readers who create book-related content on social media — a group that began mainly as women promoting their favorite “romantasy” titles, but has since grown to include readers of all types.

But the space to leverage that community to take on the still-reigning book-tracking champ Goodreads may be a bit too crowded now. Tome, for instance, had to compete against several other book trackers with a similar vibe, such as Fable, Margins, Bookly, StoryGraph, Bookmory, Pagebound, TBR, and others. (TBR’s app not to be confused with the book recommendations site TBR, which is also shutting down in June!)

In a blog post announcing the closure, Tome hints at the competitive landscape, noting that its community of 100,000 readers wasn’t able to reach the scale needed to keep up with the expense of running a social app that supported memes, GIFs, and video. The company said that in the end the service “wasn’t financially viable to keep running.”

Tome said that the app will officially shut down on May 29, at which point it will stop working as the servers will have been shut off. The website will also shut down on the day, the company said.

The post also advises Tome users on how to download their data, including posts and images and a spreadsheet of their reading updates.

Stockholm-based vibe-coding platform Lovable is growing revenue at an astronomical rate — and doing something that few U.S. companies, startup or otherwise, would even contemplate: voluntarily promising annual 10% salary raises for all employees on their work anniversaries.

In the U.S. corporate world, employees don’t generally get built-in raises unless they’ve unionized, and even then, a 10% raise across the board is typically spread over multiple years of a contract, not delivered annually.

While most companies do have stock and profit-sharing plans, what’s different here is that Lovable is sharing the wealth as a direct raise, not contingent on vesting schedules or the employee kicking in cash to convert stock options into actual shares.

“This program reflects the enduring company we want to build. It applies to all full-time employees meeting performance expectations on their work anniversary. The longer someone stays at Lovable, the more deeply they understand the company, contribute to its momentum, and shape its culture,” Maryanne Caughey, lead of Lovable’s people team, told TechCrunch.

Now, it’s true that such a decent raise across the board is made easier — perhaps is only possible — at a smallish company. Lovable is currently at 200 employees but plans to grow to 400 by year-end, with hiring in roles across the board, Caughey said.

Still, the startup is adding revenue so rapidly that Lovable can share the cash with those who are creating it. In some months, it has said, it grew annual recurring revenue by $100 million. Lovable claimed in March that it had already crossed $400 million in ARR and, at one point, projected hitting $1 billion in ARR by around the end of the year. Lovable launched its vibe-coding product in late 2024 and has been on a tear ever since.

For many companies, cash may be too precious to commit it to the permanent overhead of larger salaries. Equity compensation doesn’t cost them cash out of pocket immediately. That’s a big reason most startups default to loading up employees with options rather than raising base pay.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

The bigger point is that this represents a reversal of how Corporate America tends to treat employees by default. The typical process is: get hired (often through a grueling, multi-step, multi-month process) and then go through annual reviews. The message is: prove your worth to earn the offer, then keep proving it repeatedly to keep your job. If you dream of raises and promotions, go above and beyond first, make your case, then … we’ll see.

Startup grind culture is arguably even more grueling. The trope is that employees are expected to sleep at work to potentially grow the value of their stock, then wait for the company to go public or offer them some kind of tender offer (an opportunity to sell their shares before the company’s IPO).

So, would Lovable’s approach nix the toxic corporate politics that feed on job insecurity and creep into so many companies over time? Lovable’s Head of Growth Elena Verna argues it could.

“Because we don’t take retention for granted. It’s treated as compounding value that is actively recognized and rewarded. You don’t have to re-prove your worth every cycle. So everyone can focus on doing the best work of their life, not managing optics,” she writes in a LinkedIn.

Founder CEO Anton Osika added on Twitter: “Because people get more valuable the longer they stay, and they shouldn’t have to worry about getting a raise or not.”

It’s also true that this is a savvy retention play. Lovable is almost certainly fending off aggressive poaching attempts from competitors.

“We hire people with a founder mentality who can operate with autonomy, ship meaningful work early, and grow their impact over time. We want to reward that,” Caughey said.

The truth is, if Lovable’s valuation keeps climbing, more equity might ultimately be worth far more than a 10% cash raise. Still, cash is certain, while equity is a bet. And in a world where employees have been subjected to mass layoffs attributed to AI — even as their companies post record revenues and profits — this kind of approach is refreshing.

Note: This story was updated to include a comment from Lovable and its most recent employee headcount.

Regular internet users and corporations are not the only victims of malicious hackers. Sometimes, the hackers themselves get hacked.

That is what happened in an unusual hacking campaign, where an unknown group of hackers targeted systems already compromised by a prolific cybercrime group known as TeamPCP. Once the hackers broke into those systems, they immediately kicked out TeamPCP hackers and removed their tools, according to a new report by cybersecurity firm SentinelOne.

From there, the hackers use their access to deploy code designed to replicate across different cloud infrastructure like a self-spreading worm, steal various types of credentials, and finally send the stolen data back to their infrastructure.

TeamPCP is a cybercriminal group that has gathered headlines in the last few weeks, thanks to a series of high-profile hacks attributed to the group. Those hacks have included a breach of the European Commission’s cloud infrastructure, and a broadscale cyberattack against widely used vulnerability scanner tool Trivvy, which affected any company that relied on it, including LiteLLM and AI recruiting startup Mercor, among others.

Alex Delamotte, the SentinelOne senior researcher who found the new hacking campaign and dubbed it “PCPJack,” told TechCrunch that it’s not clear who is behind it. At this point, Delamotte said her three theories are that the hackers are either disgruntled ex-TeamPCP members, are part of a rival group, or are a third party “who chose to directly model their attack tools on TeamPCP’s earlier campaigns,” many of which targeted cloud infrastructure.

“The services targeted by PCPJack strongly resemble the December-January TeamPCP campaigns, before the alleged change in group membership that happened in February-March,” said Delamotte.

Delamotte also noted that the hackers don’t just target systems compromised by TeamPCP, but they also scan the internet for exposed services such as the virtual machine cloud platform Docker, databases running MongoDB, and others. But SentinelOne said the group appeared largely focused on targeting TeamPCP.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

According to the report, the hackers’ own tools keep a tally of the number of hacked targets where they successfully evicted TeamPCP by sending this information back to its infrastructure.

The goals of the PCPJack hackers appear to be purely financial, as they steal credentials with a focus on monetizing them. The hackers do this by reselling them, selling access to the hacked systems as so-called initial access brokers — hackers who break into systems and then let paying customers into the hacked machines, or by extorting the victims directly.

The hackers, however, do not try to install software to mine crypto on the hacked systems, likely because that strategy requires more time to reap rewards, according to Delamotte.

As part of some of their attacks, the hackers are using domains that suggest they are phishing for password manager credentials and using fake help desk websites, according to Delamotte.

In Brief

Prediction market startup Kalshi announced on Thursday a $1 billion Series F round, valuing the company at $22 billion. That’s double the $11 billion valuation Kalshi nabbed just five months ago after raising a $1 billion Series E. This latest round was led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Paradigm.

The startup told Bloomberg that its annualized revenue exceeds $1.5 billion.

Kalshi, alongside rival Polymarket, ushered in the boom in prediction markets where consumers place bets on everything, from what stars are wearing at the Met Gala, to which sports team will win the next game.

In a blog post, Kalshi said that institutional trading on the platform has increased 800% in the past six months and that it hosts 90% of prediction market activity in the U.S. (Polymarket has been working to unroll remaining restrictions on its U.S. operations from a ban imposed in 2022.)

The head of Jeff Bezos’ family office has left the board of directors of Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by the Amazon founder, according to numerous state filings reviewed by TechCrunch.

Melinda Lewison, who leads investments at Bezos Expeditions, appears to have stepped down at some point in the last few months, documents filed with the Delaware, Florida, and Massachusetts secretaries of state show. That leaves Bezos with no direct representation on Slate’s board as the company prepares to put its low-cost electric truck into production later this year.

Slate did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Lewison and Bezos did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Lewison’s departure raises questions about Bezos’ support and involvement with the startup at a time when the Amazon founder is now apparently focused on robotics at his new startup, Project Prometheus. That company raised more than $6 billion late last year and is reportedly seeking $100 billion for a new fund focused on buying industrial companies in order to automate them with AI.

The precise level of Bezos’ involvement in Slate has always been difficult to divine. The company has never revealed how much money the Amazon founder contributed in its first funding round in 2023, which totaled around $120 million. Slate Auto also has not confirmed whether Bezos participated in the company’s Series B round, which brought its total funding to around $700 million.

Last month, Slate announced a $650 million Series C round, but only named one lead investor: TWG Global, a firm run by Guggenheim Partners CEO Mark Walter. Los Angeles-based VC firm Slauson & Co, an existing investor, confirmed to TechCrunch that it also participated.

Chris Barman, Slate’s first hire and its now-former CEO, said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 that Bezos was “pretty hands-off.”

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

“We’ve had interface where we invited him in and he came and joined us once along the journey, and looked at the vehicle, and we talked a little bit about what the future might be,” she said late last year. “But other than that, he’s very hands off and really letting us focus on getting the vehicle to market.”

Still, Slate Auto is loaded with Amazon alumni. It was co-founded by former Amazon Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke. The automotive startup’s new CEO is Peter Faricy, a former VP of Amazon Marketplace. Many of the company’s divisions are led by former Amazon employees.

When Anthropic unveiled its new Mythos model in April, it also delivered a stern warning to anyone developing software. The model was so powerful at sniffing out software vulnerabilities, the lab claimed, that it had discovered thousands of high-severity bugs that would need to be fixed before it could be made public.

Now, security researchers for Mozilla’s Firefox browser are providing a closer look at what that process has looked like in practice, and what Mythos’ powers mean for software security at large.

In a post published on Thursday, Mozilla said Mythos has unearthed a wealth of high-severity bugs, including some that had lain dormant in the code for more than a decade.

That’s a significant improvement from what AI security tools were capable of even six months ago. Until now, AI bug-finding tools have come with severe drawbacks, often inundating security teams with low-quality reports and false positives. But Mozilla’s researchers say the latest generation of tools have turned a corner, particularly now that agentic systems can assess their own work and filter out bad results.

“It is difficult to overstate how much this dynamic changed for us over a few short months,” the researchers wrote. “First, the models got a lot more capable. Second, we dramatically improved our techniques for harnessing these models.”

Image Credits:Firefox

The results are striking: In April 2026, Firefox shipped 423 bug fixes, compared to just 31 exactly a year earlier. The researchers have also published details on 12 of the bugs, which range from a pair of unusual sandbox vulnerabilities, to a 15-year-old error in how the browser parses an HTML element.

“These things are actually just suddenly very good,” Brian Grinstead, a distinguished engineer at Mozilla, told TechCrunch. “We see that on our own internal scanning, we see that on external bug reports, and we see that in all sorts of signals across the industry.”

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

The fact that the system helped reveal vulnerabilities in Firefox’s “sandbox” system is particularly impressive, given how intricate an attack that exploits it needs to be. To find sandbox vulnerabilities, the model must write a compromised patch for the browser, then attack the most secure part of the software with the new code implemented. Finding and demonstrating the bug is a delicate, multi-step process, requiring both creativity and close attention.

To put this into context, Mozilla’s bug bounty program pays researchers who can find a bug in Firefox’s sandbox up to $20,000 — the highest reward available. Despite the top-dollar bounty, however, Grinstead says Mythos is finding more sandbox issues than human researchers ever did. “We do get them,” he told TechCrunch, “but not at the volume that we are able to find with this technique.”

Notably, the Firefox team still isn’t using AI to fix the bugs, despite well-documented progress in AI coding tools. The team does ask AI to code up patches for each bug, but the resulting code usually can’t be deployed directly, and instead serves as a model for a human engineer.

“For the bugs we’re talking about in this post, every single one is one engineer writing a patch and one engineer reviewing it,” Grinstead says. “We have not found it to be automatable.”

It’s still not clear how AI’s emerging capabilities will change the broader balance of power in cybersecurity. One month since Mythos was previewed, most of the bugs discovered likely haven’t been patched, which makes it hard to capture the full scope of their impact. Anthropic has been scrupulous about following responsible disclosure norms, but it’s likely bad actors are using similar techniques behind the scenes, even if the models they’re using aren’t quite as good.

Speaking at a recent event, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was optimistic that the new tools would ultimately favor defenders. “If we handle this right, we could be in a better position than we started, because we fixed all these bugs. There are only so many bugs to find,” Amodei said. “So I think there’s a better world on the other side of this.”

Having dealt with the gritty details, Grinstead has a more measured view: “It’s useful for both attackers and defenders, but having the tool available shifts the advantage a little bit to defense. Realistically, nobody knows the answer to this yet.”

Alongside taking the wraps off the new Fitbit Air, a Whoop-esque fitness band, Google on Thursday said it is also rebranding its Fitbit app as Google Health and launching an AI-powered health coach as a subscription service.

The Health app will become a central part of Google’s fitness strategy, capitalizing on its 2021 acquisition of Fitbit, which saw the tech giant delving into fitness wearables to supplement its more general-purpose Android smartwatches.

Leveraging Google’s Gemini AI, the new Google Health Coach will offer personalized insights to users, acting as a combination fitness coach, sleep expert, and health and wellness advisor. The service has been in public preview since last year and has been undergoing improvements based on user feedback, the company said.

Image Credits:Google

Google says the Health app will be globally available on May 19, as part of the Google Health Premium subscription — the same day the new Fitbit Air goes on sale. The AI fitness coaching service will come bundled with the Google Health Premium subscription (previously Fitbit Premium), which costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers will have access to Google Health Premium at no extra cost.

Google notes the health coach service is customized for the user via an onboarding process, in which you’ll mention your health goals, your daily routine, what sort of exercise equipment you have access to, any injuries the coach should be aware of, and other lifestyle factors. The coach will then use these details to create personalized guidance and insights.

Users can also communicate with the coach using natural language to customize and update their personal details or goals at any time. They can also log workouts, meals, and health records by dictating to it, or by uploading photos or files.

Image Credits:Google

The coach will be accessible from the Today tab of the Google Health app. The company notes any insights the coach provides won’t be just a summary, but would combine information from multiple sources, like fitness and sleep metrics, environment, nutrition, cycle tracking, and U.S. medical records (if access is provided). Google said the cycle tracking, nutrition, and mental well-being features have all been redesigned for the health coach as well.

The AI-powered coach is being infused into other areas of the Google Health app as well, including the Fitness tab’s workout suggestions and guidance, the Sleep tab’s sleep tracking, and the Health tab’s summary of your metrics.

Image Credits:Google

Google’s health coach will be available first for select Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, and support for other devices is coming soon, the company says. However, anyone can download the Google Health app to get started. People without a Fitbit or Google Pixel Watch will be notified when the coach is ready for them, but Google didn’t say when that would be.

Google on Thursday unveiled its new Fitbit Air, a Whoop-like screenless wearable that retails for $100. The device includes health and fitness tracking features like 24/7 heart rate monitoring, heart rhythm monitoring with A-fib (atrial fibrillation) alerts, blood oxygen level, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, sleep stages and duration, and more.

The tech giant said in a blog post that the device is aimed at people who find wearable devices to be too bulky, complicated, or expensive, noting that the Fitbit Air is “simple, affordable and comfortable enough to wear 24/7.”

Google says the screenless design is built to allow users to “live in the moment.” You can track your health and fitness through the Google Health app — the rebranded version of the Fitbit App, which Google also unveiled on Thursday.

The new wearable is noticeably smaller than its predecessors, staying true to the “Air” branding, as it’s 25% smaller than the Fitbit Luxe and 50% smaller than the Inspire 3.

The device will automatically track common activities and workouts; Google says the experience is personalized to you and improves over time as it learns your habits.

Image Credits:Google

The device weighs 12 grams with the band and 5.2 grams without the band. It also pairs with the Pixel Watch, which means you could use the larger wearable throughout the day and then switch to the Fitbit Air at night or during workouts for a more comfortable experience, Google says.

The Fitbit Air has up to a week of battery life, and fast charging can deliver a full day of power in just five minutes. It’s also water-resistant up to 50 meters.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

The tech giant also announced that Google Health Coach, its Gemini-powered all-in-one fitness trainer, sleep coach, and health and wellness advisor, is now available for Google Health Premium subscribers. The Google Health Coach can help with tasks like creating custom workout routines based on your goals and available equipment, analyzing your sleep habits, and more.

The new wearable is launching with three band types: a “Performance Loop Band” made from recycled materials with a breathable fit, a waterproof “Active Band,” and a discreet “Elevated Modern Band.”

The Fitbit Air is available for preorder now and will go on sale May 26.

Startup Battlefield 200 applications are open, but only for three more weeks. Apply by May 27 for your shot at VC access, global visibility, TechCrunch coverage, $100,000 equity-free, and more opportunities for major scaling impact.

Pre-Series A founders — and anyone who knows a startup worth backing — this is your reminder: The deadline is approaching fast, and the strongest contenders are already entering the arena. If your startup has been nominated, don’t wait. Complete your application now before the window closes.

Know a startup that deserves to step into the spotlight? Nominate them now to give them time to complete the application by the deadline.

Image Credits:TechCrunch

Global visibility that’ll launch your startup

This is not just another pitch competition. Startup Battlefield 200 puts you on the main stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in front of 10,000+ attendees, top-tier investors, media, and the global TechCrunch audience. You are competing live, getting direct VC feedback, and proving your company belongs among the next breakout startups.

Waiting until the last minute is the fastest way to lose your edge. Early applicants have more time to prepare, more opportunities to stand out to the TechCrunch editorial team, and a stronger chance to make an impact before the competition intensifies. Nominate your startup, then finish the job and apply.

Image Credits:TechCrunch

Who should apply?

We’re looking for ambitious early-stage startups building innovative, potentially category-defining products. Applications are open globally across every industry. Most selected companies are pre-Series A, though select Series A startups may qualify case by case. A functional MVP and clear product demo are required. Most importantly, we’re looking for founders building with vision, execution, and real market impact.

This is the same launchpad where companies like Dropbox, Discord, Fitbit, Trello, and Mint gained early momentum. Thousands apply every year. Only 200 are selected. Just 20 finalists pitch live on the Disrupt Stage. One startup takes the crown.

Techcrunch event This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. This Week Only: Buy one pass, get the second at 50% off

Your next round. Your next hire. Your next breakout opportunity. Find it at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where 10,000+ founders, investors, and tech leaders gather for three days of 250+ tactical sessions, powerful introductions, and market-defining innovation. Register before May 8 to bring a +1 at half the cost. San Francisco, CA | REGISTER NOW

What selected startups receive

Selected startups receive one of the highest ROI opportunities available to early-stage founders. It’s free to apply, and the potential return — from investor exposure to media coverage and customer growth — can create real scaling impact.

Image Credits:Kimberly White / Getty Images

Global exposure across TechCrunch’s audience

Free exhibit table for all 3 days

4 all-access Disrupt passes

Featured startup profile in the event app

Press list access and lead-generation opportunities

Exclusive founder masterclasses

A chance to pitch live on the Disrupt Stage

Direct feedback from top VCs

A shot at $100,000 in equity-free funding

Apply before May 27

Applications close May 27. The founders who break through are not waiting until the final hour — they are already making their move.

If you are building something category-defining, or know a founder who is, now is the time to step forward. Nominate your startup — or one that deserves the spotlight — and complete your application before the deadline runs out.